1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display panel (PDP), and more particularly, to a PDP driven by a voltage of a driving waveform causing a stable discharge, by which electrodes are disposed to surround sides of a discharge cell to efficiently utilize discharge space, thereby improving light-emitting efficiency, and a voltage of a falling ramp type pulse waveform is supplied to an electrode to which a reset pulse is supplied during an initial reset stage, thereby improving its ability for controlling a wall voltage which is accumulated around each of the electrodes and is disposed sides of the discharge cell.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a flat display having a wide screen. The PDP displays a desired image using visible light rays generated by sealing discharge gas and supplying discharge voltage between two substrates on which a plurality of electrodes are formed to generate vacuum ultraviolet rays and exciting phosphors on which the vacuum ultraviolet rays are formed in a predetermined pattern.
The PDP has a front panel and rear panel as its display panels. A conventional PDP includes a front substrate, a pair of sustain discharge electrodes for causing a sustain discharge, a dielectric layer, and a protection film on the front panel, and a rear substrate, an address electrode, a dielectric layer, barrier ribs, and a phosphor layer, etc. on the rear panel. The front and rear substrates are spaced apart from each other and face each other in parallel. A space between the two substrates is a unit cell space that is partitioned by the barrier ribs and generates a discharge to form a discharge cell.
The PDP is driven using an address display separation method that supplies a waveform voltage to each of the electrodes in which the waveform voltage is classified into a reset period in which every discharge cell is initialized, an address period in which a discharge cell to effect a sustain discharge is selected, and a sustain discharge period in which sustain discharge for the selected discharge cell is effected.
The conventional PDP has low permeability with respect to visible light rays, since the visible light rays generated by exciting the phosphor must pass through the front substrate, the pair of sustain discharge electrodes, the dielectric layer, and the protection film of the front panel. The conventional PDP also has a low light emitting efficiency since the pair of sustain discharge electrodes are disposed not in the rear and side of but in the front of the discharge cell, the pair of sustain discharge electrodes generates their sustain discharge only in the front of discharge space of the discharge cell and the discharge space is not efficiently used. Also, charged particles created by the discharge occur in the front of the discharge cell to cause ion-sputtering that damages the phosphor layer in the rear of the discharge cell, resulting in a permanent afterimage.